TUESDAY: Fox co-hosts all seem to agree!

TUESDAY, JULY 15, 2025

It was divine intervention: There's nothing "wrong" with religious belief. Stating the obvious, religious belief is found all over the world.

Beyond that, there's nothing "wrong" with Christian religious belief. To cite one example, Christian religious belief lay at the heart of Dr. King's ministry—a ministry in which Dr. King repeatedly expressed his devotion to "the love ethic of Jesus."

There's nothing "wrong" with religious belief! Within the American context, there is something quite unusual about bringing religious belief into the statement of major news judgments about major news events. 

With that in mind, we thought we'd take note of what we saw, this past Sunday, on three Fox News Channel programs.

It had been exactly one year since last July's assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. The anniversary was treated as a major news topic by a wide array of major news orgs, including the New York Times.

On Fox, it became another opportunity to voice an unusual news judgment—the judgment that President Trump escaped death that day due to divine intervention.

You may recall what happened on Fox & Friends Weekend on the morning after the original event.  The regular co-hosts were present that Sunday, joined from the start by one co-host from the weekday Fox & Friends program:

Fox & Friends Weekend: July 14, 2024
Will Cain: co-host, Fox & Friends Weekend
Rachel Campos-Duffy: co-host, Fox & Friends Weekend
Pete Hegseth:  co-host, Fox & Friends Weekend
Lawrence Jones: co-host, Fox & Friends

On that occasion, three of the four friends chose to go fully doctrinal. As we noted in this report, they specifically said that the former president's life had been saved by the intervention of "our lord and savior, Jesus Christ." 

On the ground in Butler, Pa., Lawrence Jones went first:

JONES (7/14/24): There is no Donald Trump today without Jesus Christ this morning. I mean, we could be having a very different conversation this morning—

CAMPOS-DUFFY: That's right.

JONES: —going over the obituary of the 45th president this morning. And if it wasn't for the grace of God, things could have been different. So I give honor and glory to our lord and savior, Jesus Christ, for protecting the former president. 

It wasn't possible that a mentally disordered young man, crawling around on a slanted roof, had simply missed a shot. To Jones, the explanation for what had occurred had to be something different. 

Jones went full doctrinal that day, explicitly thanking Jesus Christ. Campos-Duffy and Hegseth explicitly followed suit. Only Cain demurred.

Again, there's nothing "wrong" with holding such a judgment as a matter of personal faith or belief. It is unusual to see the co-hosts of a major news program offering such an explicit doctrinal claim in the form of a specific news judgment.

This Sunday, the rules of the road had apparently been changed, possibly from the top. First on Fox & Friends Weekend, then on The Big Weekend Show, then on Life, Liberty and Levin, one host or co-host after another stated his or her belief that Candidate Trump had been spared that day thanks to divine intervention.

That said, no one went beyond the softer claim that the president's life had been saved "by God." Still, that belief was stated by one and all, even including the perpetually furious Mark Levin. 

There's no way it was just a missed shot. On the Fox News Channel, the news judgment was ubiquitous. It could only have been the result of divine intervention.

Such judgments will be routinely expressed on expressly religious channels. Such judgments will also be expressed on Fox News Channel programs, although the word may have come down from the top this year to keep such statements non-doctrinal. 

We're sorry to have to report this:

It's depressing to see this channel create its peculiar blend of themes—the performative belief in the greatness of God, mixed with the ugly, smutty, misogynist humor which increasingly dominates an array of major programs on this corporate messaging channel.

We had planned to transcribe some of the statements made on Sunday's programs. That said, it's very depressing to watch Fox News Channel shows as our flailing nation slides toward the sea—and as the finer people at Blue America's orgs choose to avert their gaze from this unusual conduct.

On Fox, the co-hosts believe in the glory of God. They also believe that liberal women are like horses, cows, pigs and dogs, generic "livestock" and whales.

That's what they know at Fox. Over at the New York Times, they know they should look away.

DESPERATELY SEEKING THE BEST: Nicolle Wallace has started a podcast!

TUESDAY, JULY 15, 2025

In our view, she chose an unfortunate name: Concern about Medicaid coverage is OUT! By now, it's long, long gone. 

In its place, focus on the Jeffrey Epstein client list is now very much IN.

The zone gets flooded with amazing speed at this point. Also, does anything around here ever make any real sense? 

We now have major Democratic politicians calling for the release of the Epstein files. Does the work of the Justice Department really proceed in some such manner? After some sort of investigation, does the DOJ release a mountain of files about the various people who aren't being charged with crimes—most of whom, with great likelihood, may have done nothing wrong?

Is that the way the system works? We're going to guess that it isn't! Meanwhile, in her new column for the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg offers this portrait of the way some of us imperfect humans are sometimes inclined to behave:

Trump’s Fans Forgive Him Everything. Why Not Epstein?

[...]

Epstein was a major subject at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit, a conservative conference that began on Friday. Speaking from the stage in Tampa, Fla., the comedian Dave Smith accused Trump of actively covering up “a giant child rapist ring.” The audience cheered and applauded.

Having nurtured conspiracy theories for his entire political career, Trump suddenly seems in danger of being consumed by one. In many ways it’s delicious to watch, but there’s also reason for anxiety, because for some in Trump’s movement, this setback is simply proof that they’re up against a conspiracy more powerful than they’d ever imagined.

[...]

[T]he administration lies all the time—that alone doesn’t explain why this issue has so tested the MAGA coalition. To understand why it’s such a crisis, you need to understand the crucial role that Epstein plays in the mythologies buttressing MAGA. The case is of equal interest to QAnon types, who see in Epstein’s crimes proof of their conviction that networks of elite pedophiles have hijacked America, and of right-wing critics of Israel, who are convinced that Epstein worked for the Mossad, the country’s spy service.

Trumpism has always been premised on the idea that he’s warring against dark, even satanic globalist forces, and within the movement there’s a fierce yearning for the cathartic moment when those forces will be exposed and vanquished. The Epstein files were supposed to show the world, once and for all, the scale of the evil system that [some of] Trump’s voters believe he is fighting.

We've added two important words in that fine sentence. As Goldberg specified earlier, we're speaking here about some of President Trump's voters. We aren't speaking about all such voters, probably not even most.

That to the side, so it seems to go in these latter days. For starters, consider this:

In the aftermath of the so-called "democratization of media," bro comedians have seized control of much of the American discourse. That extends all the way from the Fox News Channel on down.

In that passage, one comedian is quoted accusing Trump of covering up "a giant child rapist ring." Is something like that taking place in the various twists and turns of this current convoluted legal case? 

We have no idea. But as "democratization" has crept across the land, major portions of American discourse have been built around such fears, starting with the pictures of children on milk cartons and proceeding through the amazingly bungled preschool sex abuse trials of the 1980s.

Out in Los Angeles, the McMartin preschool case may have been the most famous. To refresh yourself about its strange evidentiary procedures, you can just click here

Back in New Jersey, the Wee Care preschool case also seemed to turn on hysterical investigative procedures. Writing for Harper's, Dorothy Rabinowitz performed important journalism concerning that case. Somehow, the apparent fever surrounding these (and other) cases seemed to break at some point.

From there, it was onward toward QAnon's belief that the world is in the hands of a bunch of Democratic Party child sex abusers who are also cannibals. A pleasing summer on cable news pre-convicting Gary Condit helped us transition to that point, though that case focused on an intern.

A remarkable number of people seemed to accept the improbable claims at the heart if the QAnon craze. This seems to be one of the ways we imperfect humans are sometimes inclined to think. 

In short, the democratization of media, producing the ease with which such fevers can be spread, has helped create a world in which what may have been secret or latent fears are secret or latent no more. The widespread acceptance of such improbable claims reveals what may be a surprising fact:

There seems to be nothing so implausible that many of us imperfect humans may not be inclined to believe it.

What secret fears lurk in the hearts of people?  Today, thanks to democratization, few such secrets are left:

Was Barack Obama born in Kenya? For an amazing percentage of GOP voters, saying it seemed to make it so—and the current president made himself the king of the birthers through years of spreading braindead claims at the Fox News Channel.

Was the 2020 election rigged and stolen? The sitting president still hotly advances that claim, again and again and again and again. Many of his voters still seem to regard this claim as true, even after it has generally been abandoned by employees of that same "cable news" channel.

It's long been easy for those of us in Blue America to mock the voters in Red America who seem prepared to believe whatever the president says. That said, have there been any tiny flaws in our own Blue America's game—tiny flaws which may have helped the sitting president end up in the White House again?

We Blues have found it very hard to see the things we may have done to help the current sitting president attain his current status. We humans are gifted with limited cognition, and that's even true Over Here!

Why might someone who isn't crazy vote for Donald J. Trump? In our view, the answers are many and the answers are obvious—to everyone except maybe Us.

At this site, we thought of that hole in Blue America's game as we listened to the first episode of yet another new podcast. More accurately, we thought of that hole in Blue America's game when we saw the name of the podcast—the name its creator chose:

The Best People with Nicolle Wallace

Who are The Best People? They’re the most magnetic and engaging people in the room; the ones who know how to get that extra something out of every collaboration, connection, and endeavor. These are people who are the best at what they do and know how to bring out the best in others. Now, in an era of social and political upheaval, The Best People share lessons that we can all use. Listen as Nicolle Wallace seeks varied perspectives on how to keep reaching for truth, decency, and connection.

Wallace will be speaking with "The Best People!" When the analysts saw that name, they furiously tore at their hair, then ran out into the yard.

For the record, Nicolle Wallace is a good, decent person. (She's also wealthy by this time, a small voice sardonically says.) She's been a major part of the American discourse ever since the early years of this century. The leading authority on her career starts its portrait as shown:

Nicolle Wallace

Nicolle Wallace (born February 4, 1972) is an American television political commentator and author. She is the anchor of the MSNBC news and politics program Deadline: White House and a former co-host of the ABC daytime talk show The View.....

In her former political career, Wallace served as the White House Communications Director during the second term of the presidency of George W. Bush and as the Communications Director for his 2004 re-election campaign. Wallace also served as a senior advisor for John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

[...]

Since May 9, 2017, Wallace has been the anchor of the afternoon news and opinion program Deadline: White House on MSNBC. Deadline: White House garnered a total of 2 million viewers in July 2020, and in the following month, it was expanded to two hours.

Going back to her Republican days, Wallace has always been an extremely engaging "communicator." She has remained extremely engaging in the years since she, along with quite a few others, walked away from the GOP during these Donald Trump years.

MSNBC and CNN have slowly been routed by Fox in the "cable news" ratings wars. As this rout has developed, Deadline: White House has been one of MSNBC's most heavily watched programs. 

During the Biden years, the program focused heavily on the legal cases being brought against former President Trump. We thought that was poor political judgment. In fairness to Wallace, no one has perfect political judgment, except quite possibly us.

Wallace started out in the GOP; she switched over long ago. She's an extremely engaging communicator and also a good, decent person.

That said, we've long thought that her political judgment may have been faulty during the Deadline years. No one has perfect judgment, and that even includes us Blues. 

That said, even as many in the MAGA movement may seem to believe the darnedest things, those of us in Blue America may have holes in our game too. 

This brings us back to Wallace's podcast, which she calls The Best People. The analysts screamed and tore at their hair when they learned about that choice. 

After that, they ran out into the yard, where they rent their garments and howled. We thought they were overdoing it just a bit, but we did see their basic point. 

In our view, we Blues can learn about the holes which may exist in our game as we listen to, or as we watch, this new podcast's first episode.

Tomorrow: Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow! (Or so the analysts said...)

MONDAY: We're so old that we can recall....

MONDAY, JULY 14, 2025

...all that talk about Medicaid cuts: We're so old that we can remember all the talk about Medicaid cuts and the loss of Medicaid coverage.

That was maybe two weeks ago. As of today, the flooding of the zone has moved almost everyone on.

We're talking now about Jeffrey Epstein, and about the literal flood. With coffee prices already rising substantially, we're going to drop the 50% tariff bomb on the coffee fields of Brazil.

Also, President Trump has discovered that Vladimir Putin, who's always extending nice, doesn't honor his commitments about wanting to end the war. Plus, the Epstein client list, and the fury surrounding that.

Before that, we did have discussion of the Medicaid cuts—or then again, maybe we didn't. As we noted all last week, when the gang on The Five told the public this, no one said a word:

GUTFELD (7/2/25): [The Democrats] are the human version of hysterical tweets...They say, "Oh my God, you're cutting Medicaid! You're throwing, you're throwing the poor and needy"

No, no, no! These are young, able-bodied people, and illegals. You know, this isn't a free buffet for people who could afford to pay for it. So enough with that.

[...]

PERINO: Every time a Democrat goes on TV, they add two to three million more to how many people are going to lose their health care. It's 7.8 million people that would be required to do these work requirements, and it's illegal immigrants. It's 7.8.

Yesterday, it was up to 20 million, even though that's not true. It's like a game of telephone down there.

Red America was given the word. No one was going to lose Medicaid coverage! No one except (possibly) some able-bodied young slackers—and a bunch of "illegals."

That's what Fox News viewers were told as the megabill neared passage in the Senate. Over here in Blue America, no one said a word.

How many people will lose Medicaid coverage? We can't really say. The estimates are educated best guesses by specialists. We aren't in any position to say which estimate might be wrong.

That said, as The Five kept churning their messaging that day, they never tried to explain why Senators Tillis and Hawley and Collins had said the thing they'd said.

Right from the start, Senators Tillis and Hawley and Collins, Republicans all, had voiced their concern about the people who would be losing their Medicaid coverage under terms of their own party's bill. If the picture painted by Gutfeld / Perino and them was accurate, why had Tillis / Hawley / Collins been saying that? 

Viewers of the Fox News Channel were never asked to think about that—and the finer people in Blue America's press corps never said a word about what those viewers in Red America were being told.

We didn't get to one question last week. We never got to this basic question about what Gutfeld and Perino had said:

Are illegal / undocumented / unauthorized immigrants eligible for Medicaid coverage in the first place?

We'd been googling that topic for several weeks, without achieving peak clarity. When we saw The Five sell their story last week, we decided to google again.

Was Medicaid coverage for "illegals" the target of the GOP bill? That notion had already been floating around for some time. On May 16, the White House posted this, linking to a report in Breitbart:

One, Big, Beautiful Bill PROTECTS Medicaid by REMOVING Illegals from the Program

The One, Big, Beautiful Bill is a generational chance to protect Medicaid for Americans by removing at least 1.4 million illegal immigrants from the program.

Read more in Breitbart:

“House Republicans are moving to block an estimated 1.4 million illegal aliens from receiving American taxpayer-funded Medicaid as Democrats struggle to message their support for the unpopular position.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee completed its markup of its portion of the budget reconciliation bill Wednesday morning after an all-night session which included a provision blocking anyone unable to verify citizenship, nationality, or satisfactory immigration status from coverage.

The committee projects 1.4 million illegal aliens will be removed from the program due to those requirements.”

That was the official White House post. Such messaging helps explain the calls which were popping up on C-Span's Washington Journal, including the one we transcribed:

MODERATOR (6/29/25): Kelly, in Clemmons, North Carolina, on the line for Republicans. Good morning, Kelly!

KELLY IN NORTH CAROLINA: Hi, Tammy! Well, I want to tell that man right there that his prayers have already been answered. Because they're not cutting Social Security, they're not cutting Medicare, and they're not cutting Medicaid. 

They are reforming Medicaid, and the way the cuts would be are not real "cuts." They are no more illegals being able to use them. That's where the cuts are coming from, OK? All you people who are American citizens, you will still be getting everything you were getting...

I just want you all to know there's nothing to worry about. You are listening to propaganda, and it's all propaganda from the left. Stop listening to it, you're hurting yourselves. They are trying to make you in fear. Have faith, not fear, and God bless you all.

MODERATOR: That was Kelly in North Carolina...

The caller was sure that no one would lose Medicaid coverage except for the illegals! A few days later, there were The Five, saying pretty much the same thing to the largest audience in all of our "cable news."

That said, is it true? Can unauthorized immigrants qualify for and receive Medicaid coverage? 

You can bounce around on your search as much as you want—you can go from the Kaiser Family Foundation over to Wikipedia itself—and due to "the complexification of everything," you may not feel that you've ever encountered a clear and accurate answer. 

Below, you see what Wikipedia says. Warning: 

"Nonimmigrant" is a technical term! Also, as the name suggests a "legal permanent resident" is not an illegal immigrant:

Medicaid

[...] 

Legal permanent residents (LPRs) with a substantial work history (defined as 40 quarters of Social Security covered earnings) or military connection are eligible for the full range of major federal means-tested benefit programs, including Medicaid (Medi-Cal). LPRs entering after August 22, 1996, are barred from Medicaid for five years, after which their coverage becomes a state option, and states have the option to cover LPRs who are children or who are pregnant during the first five years. Noncitizen SSI recipients are eligible for (and required to be covered under) Medicaid. Refugees and asylees are eligible for Medicaid for seven years after arrival; after this term, they may be eligible at state option.

Nonimmigrants and unauthorized aliens are not eligible for most federal benefits, regardless of whether they are means tested, with notable exceptions for emergency services (e.g., Medicaid for emergency medical care), but states have the option to cover nonimmigrant and unauthorized aliens who are pregnant or who are children, and can meet the definition of "lawfully residing" in the United States. Special rules apply to several limited noncitizen categories: certain "cross-border" American Indians, Hmong/Highland Laotians, parolees and conditional entrants, and cases of abuse.

Again, we're dealing here with what we'd call "the complexification of everything." Such complexification leads to a related phenomenon—the inability to explain anything the federal government does.

Based on what we're reading there, "unauthorized aliens" are not eligible for Medicaid coverage, though they may receive the benefit of "Medicaid for emergency care." That said, according to this leading authority, states do have the option of covering unauthorized aliens who are pregnant or who are children. 

Meanwhile, "refugees and asylees" are said to be "eligible for Medicaid for seven years after arrival."

Are refugees and asylees "illegal immigrants?" As far as we know, they are not. But like almost everything under the sun, this matter is so complexificated that there's little hope of ever untangling these threads.

Eventually, one member of The Five went where the rubber was racing down the road. Emily Compagno said this:

COMPAGNO (7/2/25): Why can't Democrats celebrate a win? Why can't they join together to celebrate and propel a vehicle that really would lift all boats?

And I hope that for all of them stunting for their re-election purposes, and clearly just to their echo chamber constituents, that they would remember what would happen if this didn't pass.

[...]

Hearing Democrats on their TikTok and saying these sort of slogans, you know—Sandy Ocasio saying it's a betrayal of working families...or worthless Governor Gavin talking about the Americans that will lose health care—why don't you back up to the two million illegal immigrants on health care in your state, which everyone pays for, which is why they're fleeing?

Compagno further reassured Fox News viewers. The bill was a win for everyone—except, it seemed, for two million illegal immigrants in California.

"Sandy" and "Worthless Governor Gavin" were just "stunting" for their constituents, Compagno all-knowingly said. She failed to explain why Tillis, Hawley and Collins and them had engaged in similar critiques.

At any rate, Compagno seemed to be referring to Medicaid coverage under terms of Medi-Cal, "the California implementation of the federal Medicaid program." The leading authority speaks

Medi-Cal

The California Medical Assistance Program (Medi-Cal or MediCal) is the California implementation of the federal Medicaid program serving low-income individuals, including families, seniors, persons with disabilities, children in foster care, pregnant women, and childless adults with incomes below 138% of federal poverty level. Benefits include ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder treatment, dental (Denti-Cal), vision, and long-term care and support. Medi-Cal was created in 1965 by the California Medical Assistance Program a few months after the national legislation was passed. Approximately 15.28 million people were enrolled in Medi-Cal as of September 2022, or about 40% of California's population; in most counties, more than half of eligible residents were enrolled as of 2020. As of 2025, about 56% of children in California use the program.

[...]

Lawful permanent residents (green card holders) are eligible for full-scope Medi-Cal in California regardless of their date of entry if they meet all other eligibility requirements, even if they have been in the United States for less than 5 years. Beginning in 2024, people without a lawful immigration status who meet the requirements for Medi-Cal are eligible for full-scope Medi-Cal. Previously, meeting eligibility requirements other than immigration status qualified them restricted-scope Medi-Cal limited to emergency and pregnancy-related services only unless they qualified for the Young Adult Expansion (YAE) or Older Adult Expansion (OAE), which allowed individuals ages 19–26 or those over the age of 50 full-scope benefits regardless of immigration status.

On the one hand, that passage almost seems to say that "people without a lawful immigration status who meet the requirements for Medi-Cal are eligible for full-scope Medi-Cal." Elsewhere, though, we've read that the six (6) states which offer this type of coverage to unauthorized immigrants are doing so only with state money—with no federal funds involved.

Also this, live and direct from FactCheck.org:

A False Claim About Illegal Immigration and Medicaid

A House-passed reconciliation bill would reduce federal funding to states that provide state-funded health insurance to people in the U.S. illegally, resulting in 1.4 million people losing coverage, according to a preliminary Congressional Budget Office analysis. But President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers have wrongly cast the bill as removing these immigrants from Medicaid.

Medicaid is a joint federal-state government program that provides health coverage for low-income individuals and families. People living in the U.S. illegally are not eligible to receive Medicaid benefits other than for emergency medical services.

“A state funded program is by definition not Medicaid,” Leonardo Cuello, a research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families, told us in an email.

Professor Cuello continues from there, specifically citing the May 16 White House post. 

"A state funded program is by definition not Medicaid?" Does that assertion make sense? 

We're not sure, but if California is only using state money in its Medi-Cal offer, we don't know how the GOP megabill could somehow help the federal budget by shoving California's immigrant population off the Medi-Cal program.

No one is going to lose coverage except 1) a bunch of slackers, and 2) a bunch of "illegals?" Try telling that to Senator Tillis. who voted  against the bill! 

Also, try tackling the complexifications of this matter for yourself! On Fox, five agents were selling a message. As they did, Blue America's major orgs were all averting their gaze.

In conclusion, we used to talk about Medicaid cuts, but by now we've all moved on.

DESPERATELY SEEKING THE BEST: Has Blue America followed the instincts...

MONDAY, JULY 14, 2025

...of its wisest people? In fairness, anyone can make a clumsy statement, especially when they're talking.

According to Attorney General Pam Bondi, that's what happened to Attorney General Pam Bondi back on February 21.

Bondi was asked a fairly straightforward question during a Fox News interview. When John Roberts asked, Bondi gave what seemed to be a fairly straightforward answer. 

ROBERTS (2/21/25): I saw your appearance at CPAC with Bannon and with Ted Cruz, and one of the things that you alluded to, and this is something Donald Trump has talked about--

The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients? Will that really happen?

BONDI: It’s sitting on my desk right now to review. That’s been a directive by President Trump. I’m reviewing that.

She seemed to have said that the aforementioned client list was "sitting on [her] desk!"

By now, we've been told that no such client list exists. Jost last week, the attorney general explained:

BONDI (7/8/25):  In February, I did an interview on Fox, and it's been getting a lot of attention because I was asked a question about the client list, and my response was, "It's sitting on my desk to be reviewed"—meaning the file, along with the JFK, MLK files as well. That's what I meant by that. 

According to Bondi, that's what she meant by what she said on that earlier fateful day. We can't swear that her explanation is bogus. On the other hand, this:

That's what Bondi says she meant on February 21. On February 27, she may have seemed to stage a bit of a gong show, as reported that day by CBS News:

Right-wing influencers get binders labeled "The Epstein Files," but downplay revelations

A group of 15 right-wing influencers visited the White House on Thursday and emerged with binders labeled "The Epstein Files: Phase 1" that they obtained from Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has vowed to release information held by the Justice Department about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

But some of those who received the binder said there was little new information in the files. Bondi later released a statement with links to the documents, and said, "The first phase of declassified files largely contains documents that have been previously leaked but never released in a formal capacity by the U.S. Government."

Torn away from the work they love, the influencers had been flown to D.C., only to get a bunch of material everyone already had!

Some were peeved at their inclusion in the weird event. Aa of today, David French reports the ongoing fallout from this rolling mess in his new column for the New York Times:

MAGA Is Tearing Itself Apart Over Jeffrey Epstein

Last week President Trump’s Department of Justice delivered a blow to one of the foundational beliefs of the MAGA movement, one that helped carry him back to the White House.

In an unsigned memorandum, the department declared that there was no evidence that Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced deceased convicted sexual predator, maintained a client list or that he blackmailed prominent individuals for various misdeeds. The memorandum also declared that Epstein committed suicide.

Most Americans saw this news (if they saw it at all) and barely raised an eyebrow. The Epstein story was part of the past; he died in 2019. But it detonated like a bomb in the MAGA universe. Pro-Trump influencers with vast audiences couldn’t believe what they were reading.

[...]

The Epstein story mattered so much in MAGA circles because it was a key element in their indictment of America’s so-called ruling class. Trump’s appeal to the Republican base isn’t just rooted in his supporters’ extraordinary affection for the man; it’s also rooted in their almost indescribably dark view of the American government.

On the farthest fringes of this movement, that "almost indescribably dark view of the American government" has included the belief that—well, you've heard it all before, but this is the way the leading authority starts

QAnon

QAnon is a far-right American political conspiracy theory and political movement that originated in 2017. QAnon centers on fabricated claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals known as "Q". Those claims have been relayed and developed by online communities and influencers. Their core belief is that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic child molesters in league with the deep state is operating a global child sex trafficking ring and that Donald Trump is secretly leading the fight against them. 

And so on from there. "QAnon has direct roots in Pizzagate," the authority sadly reports.

So it goes as we the people continue to learn about the types of claims we humans may be inclined to believe, even with great fervor. All in all, sometimes we're "the rational animal," but a lot of the time it looks like we just aren't!

At any rate, turmoil has erupted in the wake of official reports according to which Jeffrey Epstein didn't leave a client list and actually wasn't murdered. That seems to mean that he wasn't even murdered by Hillary Clinton! 

(On the Fox News Channel's Gutfeld! show, the program's deeply peculiar host keeps implying, night after night, that Hillary Clinton really is a person who goes around killing people. So it goes as the American experiment flirts with reaching its end, thanks in large part to the endless misconduct produced on this gruesome channel.)

In these post-"democratization of media" days, this is the way corporate messaging is now delivered to those who may be inclined to be influenced. In the case of the Gutfeld! program, the Fox News Channel assembles an ever-shifting panel of flyweights to drive its mountains of messaging forward, even as Blue America's mainstream media agree to avert their gaze.

Bondi has now explained what she says she meant. Still, a large part of the pro-Trump base is in a very large fury. Meanwhile, the president has returned to the threat of imposing very large tariffs on countries which displease him—and he says he has somehow discovered a fact about Vladimir Putin which everyone else had somehow managed to know all along.

All in all, the American discourse is a rapidly rolling clown car. It has been for some time. 

This flies in the face of what we've long been told about our status as "the rational animal." But the clown show will roll along without anyone making a major attempt to rethink or recast that ancient delusion.

In one of his latest furious posts, President Trump has said he can't understand why his followers are upset with Bondi. Last Tuesday, he said he can't understand why reporters still want to talk about Jeffrey Epstein, ignoring the way his own top aides have been promoting the topic for years.

This is the shape of American discourse in The Summer of 25. Long ago and far away, in a famous skit on Saturday Night Live, Jon Lovitz, cast as a bewildered Michael Dukakis, made a bewildered statement whose spirit lives on today:

I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!

The Dukakis character made that statement about Candidate George H. W. Bush, who was in fact on his way to a win in the 1988 White House campaign. At the time, the bewilderment seemed funny and instructive. 

Carried into the present day, Blue America might ask ourselves a related question. That said, the whole framework probably doesn't seem especially funny now.

Last November, for the second time, we Blues (narrowly) lost the White House to the candidate who sits at the head of the movement encompassing QAnon and the Epstein client list. 

There's also concern about chemtrails, or possibly contrails. Mediaite reports:

Trump EPA Honcho Comes to Defense of Americans With ‘Questions’ About Chemtrails

President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin launched two new resources to deliver “total transparency” for Americans curious about “geoengineering and contrails,” whom he said had been unfairly “vilified” for years for questions asked in “good faith.”

[...]

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other agencies, contrails are produced by a combination of water vapor in aircraft engine exhaust ejected at low ambient temperatures....

The “chemtrails” conspiracy theory posits that the white condensation trails left by airplanes are toxic chemical or biological sprays spread by nefarious actors. Followers of the idea speculate on a range of reasons, including population manipulation and weather control.

Zeldin’s announcement drew immediate backlash from Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), who is co-chair of Caucus On Climate and called the proposal to investigate “genuinely insane.”

For better or worse, Rep. Beyer dropped the I-bomb on the head of Zeldin's proposal. With respect to the current endless turmoil, we would mainly recommend this:

For those of us in Blue America, it's long been easy to mock the part of the MAGA base which may be drawn to somewhat exotic beliefs and concerns. We Blues have shown little interest in exploring a related question:

How is it possible that we have managed to lose to these guys two times? 

There's more than one way to answer that question. This week, we'll start to explore this possibility:

Is it possible that we Blues have somehow done certain things unwisely?

In what ways might we Blues have gone wrong? Is it possible that we Blues have shown imperfect political judgment down through the many failed years?

It's long past time for us to seek the answer to such questions. This week, the surprising name of a new podcast will provide the starting point for our exploration.

No people are uninteresting, Yevtushenko said. We've recommended the spirit of that point of view down through these dangerous years.

Tomorrow: No people are uninteresting, Yevtushenko said


SATURDAY: A very evil person spoke up...

SATURDAY, JULY 12, 2025

...at a famous person's press conference: It's too hot here today, but mainly too humid, for a sensible person to function.

Plus, the errands that arose! All of a sudden, NAME WITHHELD's key would no longer work!

That said, we want to continue to establish the historical record. Reminding you of the human tragedy that lies at the heart of all such conditions, we want to memorialize the latest thing President Trump has said.

He said it yesterday, down in Texas, during a press event after viewing some of the devastation from the recent floods. The Q-and-A went like this:

REPORTER (7/11/25): ...here with CBS News Texas. Several families we’ve heard from are obviously upset because they say that those warnings, those alerts, didn’t go out in time, and they also say that people could have been saved. What do you say to those families?

TRUMP: Well, I think everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances. This was, I guess Kristi [Noem] said, a one-in-500, one-in-a thousand years [event]. And I just have admiration for the job that everybody did. There’s just admiration. The, uh—

Only a bad person would ask a question like that, to be honest with you. I don’t know who you are, but only a very evil person would ask a question like that.

The president stressed the word "evil." To watch the fuller exchange, you can move ahead to the 29th minute on the C-Span videotape.

Last week, President Trump named CNN as "the enemy" again because the network published an accurate report about an early damage assessment after the attack on Iran. In a very dangerous bit of behavior, he continued to heap abuse on one reporter in particular.

Yesterday, he was asked a fairly obvious question, though one which was possibly less than flattering. He quickly said that "only a very evil person" could have asked such a thing.

We've been asking, for quite some time, if something might be wrong in some way with this sitting president. The American press corps has agreed that manifestations of this type can only be discussed in the most simplistic ways possible.

Nothing to look at! Keep moving along! As they normalize and disappear these unusual behaviors, that is our press corps in action.

Humidity willing, we'll resume full services on Monday morning We'll be describing our search with regard to Medicaid coverage, and we'll be starting anew from there.

FRIDAY: Ten arrests, but no reports?

FRIDAY, JULY 11, 2025

Segregation by viewpoint: In all honesty, we'd already begun to wonder about it.

The shooting occurred on the Fourth of July. It became a larger news event when ten arrests were announced on Monday, July 7. They were ten arrests for attempted murder in an unusual shooting incident outside an immigration detention center in Alvarado, Texas.

We'd seen this matter cited with some regularity on Fox. That didn't seem like especially crazy news judgment to us. 

That said, we didn't think we'd seen the incident mentioned pretty much anywhere else. We had to hunt around a while to find this report at the New York Times. The Times report has never appeared in print editions.

Headline included, the AP report started as shown. There is no paywall to vex you:

10 held in Texas immigration detention center shooting that was ‘planned ambush,’ US attorney says

Ten people have been arrested on attempted murder charges after attackers in black military-style clothing opened fire outside a Texas immigration detention center in a “planned ambush” that left one police officer wounded, a prosecutor said.

The officer was shot in the neck on Friday, the night of the Fourth of July, after reporting to the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, about 40 miles southwest of Dallas. He was treated at a hospital and released, the Johnson County Sheriff’s office said.

The shooting took place as President Donald Trump’s administration ramps up deportations, which will be turbocharged by a massive spending bill that became law last week.

Initially, the attackers set off fireworks, and damaged cars and a guard structure by spray-painting “traitor” and ”ICE pig” on them. The attack “seemed to be designed” to draw U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel outside the facility, “and it worked,” Nancy Larson, acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said at a Monday night news conference in Fort Worth.

Two unarmed corrections officers spoke to the group in the detention center’s parking lot as someone standing in nearby woods appeared to signal with a flashlight, according to a criminal complaint. Then the Alvarado police officer arrived and someone in the woods opened fire, Larson said.

“Another assailant, who was across the street, nowhere near the corrections officers, shot 20 to 30 rounds at these unarmed corrections officers,” she said. “There was an AR-style rifle found at the scene” that was jammed, she said. A flag saying “Resist fascism, fight oligarchy,” and flyers with words such as “Fight ICE terror with class war” also were recovered near the center.

The report continues from there. 

This seems like a striking event. As charged, this wasn't the act of some lone wolf, as was the case with the recent Minnesota murders. As charged, this seems to have been the act of an organized, ten-member group.

The incident was getting a lot of play on Fox. By our reckoning, it seemed to be getting weirdly limited play everywhere else. 

And then, holy cow! Isaac Schorr offered an opinion piece at Mediaite which started off like this:

CNN and MSNBC Completely Ignore Left-Wing Domestic Terror Attack on ICE Agents

On the Fourth of July, 11 left-wing activists mounted a domestic terror attack on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention facility in Alvarado, Texas.

“The defendants, dressed in black military-style clothing, began shooting fireworks at the facility, as part of an organized attack,” alleged the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas in a press release on Tuesday. “After approximately 10 minutes of convening, one or two individuals broke off from the main group and began to spray graffiti on vehicles and a guard structure in the parking lot at the facility. An Alvarado police officer responded to the scene after correctional officers called 911 to report suspicious activity. When the Alvarado police officer arrived, one alleged defendant positioned in nearby woods shot the officer in the neck area. Another alleged assailant across the street fired 20 to 30 rounds at unarmed correctional officers who had stepped outside the facility.”

If you hadn’t heard about it yet, you might just be a CNN or MSNBC viewer; neither network has devoted a single minute of airtime to covering the attack, though CNN managed to devote a sentence to it in an online story about another attack on immigration authorities.

The piece continues from there. We don't know why Schorr cites eleven alleged assailants. He links to this formal press release which only refers to ten. 

Setting that to the side, we're struck by Schorr's claim about the lack of reporting of this event on CNN and MSNBC. 

Neither network has devoted a single minute of airtime to covering the attack? We can't vouch for the perfect accuracy of that claim, but it tracks our own sense of puzzlement about the way this incident was and wasn't being reported within our nation's two major tribes.

These seems like a very strange event. It has led to ten arrests on the charge of attempted murder.

Red America gave it big play. It seems to us that Blue America didn't.

A few weeks back, Red America adopted a somewhat similar stance as its "cable news" messengers seemed to downplay the Minnesota murders. Increasingly, our news orgs are segregated by viewpoint, and they sometimes seem to report or disappear the types of facts which will keep their viewers reinforced in their preferred view of the world.

“FIGHT ICE TERROR WITH CLASS WAR?” Given the tenor of the times, this seems like a real news event.

AMERICAN DISCOURSE: A group of lions is called a pride!

FRIDAY, JULY 11, 2025

Fox News stars form a "kulturklatch:" A group of lions is called a pride. Within academia, a gathering of Fox News messengers is commonly called a "problem," or sometimes a "Kulturklatch."

Last Wednesday, Suzanne Scott had sent in the clowns on the most-watched TV show in American "cable news." Under Dana Perino's leadership, this was the day's five-member klatch (or sometimes "klatsch"):

The Five: Wednesday, July 2, 2025
Emily Compagno: co-host, Outnumbered
Lawrence Jones: co-host, Fox & Friends
Johnny Joey Jones: Fox News contributor
Dana Perino: regular co-host, The Five
Greg Gutfeld: regular co-host, The Five

No Democrat was on hand that day, not even a nominal Democrat. With Lawrence Jones in the nominal liberal chair, the five (5) klatchers agreed on the future state of play regarding the Medicaid program:

Under terms of the GOP megabill, no one was going to lose Medicaid coverage, except for some able-bodied slackers and a whole bunch of "illegals." Greg Gutfeld had been the first to state this decree, and the other klatchers all seemed to agree That even included Dalton, Georgia's Johnny Joey Jones, who seemed to think that the gang was discussing the fraud-ridden Medicare program.

As the week has gone along, we've transcribed most of the mockery which was emitted by the Mudville Five this day. Today, we're left with two obvious questions:

How many people are going to lose their Medicaid coverage under terms of the GOP bill? Also, do any "illegals" receive Medicaid coverage? Is some such thing even allowed under federal law? 

Due to "the complexification of everything," questions like those are frequently quite hard to answer. With that in mind, let's move along as quickly as we can, starting with the first basic question:

How many people will or may lose Medicaid coverage under terms of the GOP bill?

How many people will lose coverage? There's no perfect way to know! 

We're dealing here with estimates and projections—with assessment which can never be perfectly accurate. But as a simple baseline, all the way back on June 24, the nonpartisan but allegedly Deep State-afflicted CBO had officially offered this:

Information Concerning Medicaid-Related Provisions in Title IV of H.R. 1

CBO estimates that enacting the Medicaid provisions in title IV of H.R. 1 would increase the number of people without health insurance by 7.8 million in 2034 relative to baseline projections under current law.

According to the CBO, 7.8 million people would be out of luck and lacking coverage as of 2034, "relative to baseline projections under current law."

Already, complexification was lurking in that formulation! At any rate, the Fox News Channel's Perino was working from that original number when she now stumblebummed this, operating in concert with the all-knowing Master Gutfeld:

GUTFELD (7/2/25): [The Democrats] are the human version of hysterical tweets...They say, "Oh my God, you're cutting Medicaid! You're throwing, you're throwing the poor and needy"—

No, no, no! These are young, able-bodied people, and illegals. You know, this isn't a free buffet for people who could afford to pay for it. So enough with that.

[...]

PERINO: Every time a Democrat goes on TV, they add two to three million more to how many people are going to lose their health care. It's 7.8 million people that would be required to do these work requirements, and it's illegal immigrants. It's 7.8.

Yesterday, it was up to 20 million, even though that's not true. It's like a game of telephone down there.

In distinction to co-hosts like Watters and Gutfeld (and Judge Jeanine), Perino has long been cast as the MAGA-affirming co-host who isn't out of her mind. 

On this day, she was going with the original number from the CBO, though she chose to soften the blow. She said that 7.8 million people would be required "to do these work requirements."

he didn't say that anyone would necessarily lose his coverage. Stating the obvious, that isn't what the CBO had said when it produced that number.

Perino was gilding the lily, something she's presumably paid to do. She also mocked the way the Democrats kept moving their basic numbers around, forgetting to mention the basic background about where those changing numbers had come from:

Senate vote: 20 million people could lose Medicaid benefits

[...]

Nationwide, between 12 million and 20 million people could lose Medicaid coverage under deep cuts to the health insurance program proposed by Senate Republicans, according to two estimates.

The first, by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, calculates that the Senate version of the reconciliation bill would leave 11.8 million people uninsured by 2034. The second, by the Senate Joint Economic Committee Minority, estimates that about 20 million people could lose the coverage under the amended Senate bill.

[...]

The Senate included an amendment that would not only slash Medicaid writ large—as House Republicans wanted—but would also reduce the federal share of Medicaid spending for people enrolled through state-level expansions of the Affordable Care Act. The expansions made more people eligible for subsidized insurance.

This report from USA Today struck us as somewhat imprecise. That said, Perino had failed to mention the fact that the CBO had raised its number to 11.8 million due to changes in the GOP bill as it reached the Senate.

According to USA Today, the Senate bill was not the same as the original House bill.  As the proposed bill had changed, so had the CBO estimate, such as such estimates are.

The larger number—20 million, or something approaching 20 million—came from an entity called the Senate Joint Economic Committee Minority. If you want to see what that entity's report had actually said—if you want to see a pair of numbers from that group, and if you want to see where that pair of numbers had allegedly come from—you can just click here for that "updated analysis."

You can just click there and start to read! Once again, we think of a challenging part of the American discourse—the endless and ever-changing "complexification of everything."

The American discourse is routinely marked, but also marred, by the complexification of everything! In the hands of TV stars like Perino, the "cable news" shows on the Fox News Channel are driven in turn by the reduction of everything—by the reshaping of facts to fit within the parameters of what the co-hosts are told to say by the packet of sheets they receive from their producers.

It was within that framework that Perino—the co-host who isn't supposed to be crazy—ran with the official framework offered by the deeply peculiar Gutfeld. From there, it was off to the races, until Emily Compagno seemed to further the Gutfeld/Perino point concerning those confounded "illegals."

Like a Biblical profit crying out in the desert, the klatcher started with this:

COMPAGNO (7/2/25): Why can't Democrats celebrate a win? Why can't they join together to celebrate and propel a vehicle that really would lift all boats?

The bill was good for everyone, this confounded klatcher now said. Why wouldn't Democrats hail its greatness? The bill would lift all boats!

Why would Democrats oppose such a bill? As she continued, the klatcher said that the Democrats were just "stunting for their re-election purposes." 

As the day' four other co-hosts lounged about, no one asked why Republican solons like Tillis and Hawley had complained about the projected loss of Medicaid coverage right from the start of the game.

No one mentioned Senator Ernst. She hadn't said that no one was going to lose Medicaid coverage. Instead, she'd offered a thoughtful point:

What's the big deal? she'd thoughtfully said. We're all going to die in the end!

No one mentioned Tillis or Hawley or Ernst. In pseudo-discussions on this imitation "cable news" channel, inconvenient manifestations like those tend to be sent far away.

The Democrats had just been stunting, this last klatcher said. Tillis and Hawley and Collins and them simply didn't exist. 

But now, the klatcher turned to the question of Gutfeld's "illegals," though she used a less partisan term:

COMPAGNO: Hearing Democrats on their TikTok and saying these sort of slogans, you know—Sandy Ocasio saying it's a betrayal of working families...or worthless Governor Gavin talking about the Americans that will lose health care—why don't you back up to the two million illegal immigrants on health care in your state, which everyone pays for, which is why they're fleeing?

With that, the pseudo-discussion had returned to the matter of Gutfeld's "illegals." Perino had of course said the same thing—illegal immigrants were going to lose their Medicaid coverage under terms of the GOP bill.

Illegal immigrants were going to lose their Medicaid coverage under terms of the GOP bill? Now, Compagno almost seemed to be saying that up to the two million illegal immigrants were receiving Medicaid coverage thanks to "worthless Governor Gavin" out in her own home state.

For today, we're going to leave it right here. We hate to continue a theme into the weekend, but we'll do so again this week.

As we leave off for now, we'll offer a few tiny points:

What happens on the Fox News Channel doesn't stay on the Fox News Channel. It goes out all over the nation, directed at people in Red America who don't know that they are possibly being misled by a klatch of corporate hirelings.

In this case, the hirelings had seemed to say that no one would lose Medicaid coverage under terms of the GOP bill—no one except some able-bodied slackers and apparently some unknown millions of "illegals."

Thanks to the First Amendment, Gutfeld and Perino don't constitute a separate type of "illegals." Under terms of the First Amendment, people are allowed to do what these hirelings do, even on the most-watched "cable news" channel within the rapidly failing American imitation of discourse.

The klatchers are allowed to do what they do. Also, entities like the New York Times are allowed to avert their gaze as this conduct continues.

This conduct doesn't take place in secret. It takes place right there on TV.

That said, David Brooks won't name their names or cite their claims. Neither will Nicholas Kristof.

Rachel Maddow doesn't do that; neither does Nicole Wallace. Lawrence O'Donnell doesn't do that even in these, his angriest days. A type of professional courtesy seems to obtain, though it runs only one way.

In Blue America as in Red, the kulturklatchers are given license to assemble their various constructs. The megabill will lift all boats, one puzzled klatcher now said.

Tomorrow: Medicaid coverage for "illegals?" We conduct a search.

THURSDAY: Only one question remains in this realm!

THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2025

Who is President Trump: Last evening, Lawrence O'Donnell continued his weeks-long sacking of Rome. As we watched his program last night, we weren't quite sure that his attack on Peter Doocy necessarily made perfect sense.

Let's start at the beginning! Yesterday, Doocy asked President Trump a question. As you can see at Mediaite, the Q-and-A went like this:

DOOCY (7/10/25): James Comey and John Brennan now under criminal investigation related to the Trump Russia probe. Do you want to see these two guys behind bars?

TRUMP: Well, I know nothing about it other than what I read today, but I will tell you, I think they’re very dishonest people. I think they’re crooked as hell and maybe they have to pay a price for that. I believe they are truly bad people and dishonest people. So whatever happens, happens.

That was the exchange in question. After playing tape of the Q-and-A, O'Donnell lowered the boom:

O’DONNELL (7/10/25): What a babbling buffoon! And I mean the reporter this time, the Fox so-called reporter. 

"Do you want to see these two guys behind bars?" That reporter used to be by far the stupidest reporter in the White House press corps, but he has now been outdone by the dregs of Trump worshipping media that have been allowed to join the White House press corps.

So, if you work at Fox and your father got you the job because he’s the morning host there, and you enjoy all of the white male privilege that comes from your father being a morning host at Fox for many years, you then become the Fox White House correspondent who thinks, “Do you want to see these two guys behind bars?” is a good question for a president.

That incompetent buffoon probably has no idea that no president would ever, or has ever, answered a question like that prior to Donald Trump. If a real criminal investigation were actually involved here, and if a president did say he wants to see these two guys behind bars, they could never end up behind bars because they would be able to appeal any prosecution on the grounds of prejudicial presidential pre-trial publicity with the president of the United States trying to publicly convict them before trial.

Which is exactly why Richard Nixon immediately issued a corrective written statement after he once let slip into a microphone just for a second that he thought Charles Manson was guilty in the middle of Charles Manson’s criminal trial in which Charles Manson was eventually found guilty of multiple murders. Charles Manson tried to get a mistrial in the case by bringing a newspaper headline into the courtroom the next day saying, “Manson guilty, Nixon declares.”

If you are a thinly educated in the law or presidential history Fox guy, and your father gets you a job as a White House correspondents, you know none of that. And you brandish your stupidity every day with a kind of egotistical obliviousness that comes from the deep well of ignorance that you bring to your job every day at Fox and at the Trump White House.

O'Donnell has been like this for weeks. We're not sure that last night's attack on (Peter) Doocy necessarily made perfect sense.

O'Donnell's aim was certainly true when it comes to the history and to the historical norms. It's true! Presidents have (almost) always avoided making statements about matters like this, for the reasons O'Donnell cited.

That said: 

As Doocy certainly understands, President Trump is like no other president in modern American history. We'll guess that Doocy probably does know that no other president would have answered a question like that. But since President Trump almost surely would, we're not sure that Doocy shouldn't have asked.

Trump came close to answering Doocy's question. Let's face it—he basically did! That's a break with long tradition, but there's no part of being president which isn't, for better or perhaps for much worse, currently being reengineered by the sitting president.

We're not sure why Doocy shouldn't have asked. A more traditional and measured president would have refused to answer, as others have typically done.

At any rate, this incident helps illustrate a basic fact of contemporary American political life. There's only one question within that realm:

Who is Donald Trump? 

Who the heck is Donald Trump? Also, Why does President Trump do the unusual things he does?

Blue America's leading reporters and analysts have largely focused on a couple of answers to that question, starting with this:

Donald J. Trump is a liar! 

Also, He's in it every step of the way for no one but Donald J. Trump!

In this conventional portrait, President Trump is the person described by Bob Dylan way back in the earliest days:

That man who with his fingers cheats
Who lies with every breath

In this portrait, President Trump is a rational actor, but one who is relentlessly acting in his own narrow self-interest. It seems to us that the actual portrait might lead off in another direction—off in the direction of a certain type of delusional belief. 

The president's niece, Mary Trump, sketched the general outline of this portrait in her 2020 best-seller, Too Much and Never Enough. It's too late to do anything about it now, but we'll sketch that portrait in more detail in the days to come.

In our ultimate view, the people to speak to would be medical specialists. In Blue America, our journalists have almost universally agreed that they must never do any such thing—that they must never do that.

More on Doocy the elder: At any rate, O'Donnell went off on Peter Doocy last night. For the record, Doocy's father—Steve Doocy—is no longer one of the three co-hosts of the weekday Fox & Friends program.

Complaints had surfaced, post-election, that Doocy Sr. was perhaps a bit soft. After twenty-six years on the Fox & Friends couch, he's been replaced by the more reliably irate Lawrence Jones.

After twenty-six years on the sofa, he's been relegated to life on the road, where he now does human interest reports. Post-election, Fox has continued to toughen its fare, not that anyone in Blue America would ever notice or comment or care.

As for O'Donnell, he is extremely angry—but however understandable such anger may be, it may not always help. On Tuesday night, his weird criticism of CNN's Kaitlin Collins struck us as his biggest misfire yet.

O'Donnell has a lot of to offer. His anger may not always help.

AMERICAN DISCOURSE: It could be as many as twenty million?

THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2025

"Not true," Perino said: When it comes to the American discourse, denizens of the two Americas are living in two different worlds. 

In part, that's due to the so-called "democratization of media"—to the invention and spread of talk radio, of cable news and Internet publishing in its various forms, moving from individual web sites on to the current podcasts.

The growth of these "new media" has created a world marked by an unfortunate bromide:

Every flyweight a king!

Every D-list comedian; every conventionally attractive person who doesn't know what he or she is stalking about; every corporate hireling working for very large pay from a partisan corporate employer:

Each of these players can now be master of his or her own domain! Some will offer intelligent discourse—but now and then, others will not.

Along with this democratization, we rapidly moved toward the practice known as "segregation by viewpoint." This returns us to what viewers in Red America heard last Wednesday afternoon on the "cable news" program, The Five.

Sad! As we noted yesterday, one of the players on this Fox News Channel didn't seem to know which program the talkers were talking about. That said, he did seem sure that a large amount of fraud must be present within that government program, whatever it actually was.

For the record, the talkers were talking about changes to the Medicaid program—changes which would or might result from the GOP megabill. Once again, it's important to show you what people in Red America were now being told about this important legislation:

GUTFELD (7/2/25): [The Democrats] are the human version of hysterical tweets...They say, "Oh my God, you're cutting Medicaid! You're throwing, you're throwing the poor and needy"—

No, no, no! These are young, able-bodied people, and illegals. You know, this isn't a free buffet for people who could afford to pay for it. So enough with that.

[...]

PERINO: So on the health car front, Joey—every time a Democrat goes on TV, they add two to three million more to how many people are going to lose their health care. It's 7.8 million people that would be required to do these work requirements, and it's illegal immigrants. 

Those hysterical Democrats! According to this program's Nine Million Dollar Man, they were saying that people who were poor and needy might lose their Medicaid coverage because of the megabill!

That was absurd, this furious fellow said. Dana Perino joined him in nailing down the mandated messaging points:

No one would lose their Medicaid coverage except able-bodied slackers! Those slackers would lose their Medicaid coverage, but so would "illegals"—illegal immigrants.

That's what Red American viewers were told during last Wednesday's session. As we noted yesterday, Emily Compagno eventually jumped in, suggesting that there were two million such "illegals" receiving Medicaid coverage in California alone.

Are illegal / undocumented / unauthorized immigrants able to receive Medicaid coverage at all? After earlier frustrating Google searches, we still weren't entirely sure of the answer to that question.

That said, Red America was once again being reassured about the larger question. No one was going to lose Medicaid coverage except a bunch of slackers, plus a bunch of illegal immigrants.

That's what Red America was told. Over here in Blue America, we Blues keep hearing something quite different! For example, a front-page report in this morning's New York times is now saying this:

Why 1.5 Million New Yorkers Could Lose Health Insurance Under Trump Bill

President Trump’s domestic policy law, which extends federal tax cuts and slashes the social safety net, is expected to have a seismic effect on health insurance and health care in New York, with more than one million people in the state losing benefits, experts say.

In one key respect, the law’s impact will be felt more keenly in New York than in any other state—and it has nothing to do with Medicaid.

[...]

In a memo to hospital executives, Kenneth Raske, the president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, described the bill as “the most destructive health care cuts in American history.”

“There is no candy-coating the bill’s impact on New York,” Mr. Raske wrote.

Changes in Medicaid, such as new work requirements, will lead to more than one million people in New York losing health insurance during the next decade, according to estimates by the New York State Department of Health. 

As always, complexification is hard. But according to the estimate cited in this report, "more than one million people in New York [State]" will "lose [their] health insurance during the next decade" due to "changes in Medicaid" alone.

According to that estimate, a second wrinkle in the bill means that even more people in the state will be losing their health insurance. But in the Empire State alone, more than a million people will be losing their Medicaid coverage—or at least, so we Blues are now told.

(Are those more than a million people able-bodied slackers and a bunch of "illegals?" This news report in the New York Times doesn't address any such question.)

According to Gutfeld and Perino, no one will lose Medicaid coverage except for a bunch of slackers and an additional bunch of illegals. (For the record, Perino said that 7.8 million recipients would be exposed to work requirements. She didn't say that any such number would actually lose their coverage.)

This messaging was reassuring to their clients in Red America. But all along the road to passage, those of us in Blue America had been exposed to assessments which were vastly different. 

At one point in last Wednesday's program, Perino mocked the way those hysterical Democrats had been bumping their numbers up. At this point, we take a moment to explore the nature of Perino's casting on this particular program: 

Perino has long been assigned a specialized role on The Five.  She's long been expected to convey the impression that, unlike Gutfeld and Watters and Judge Jeanine, at least one of the program's four pro-MAGA co-hosts wasn't completely insane.  

Last Wednesday, she was mocking the hysterical Democrats with a bit of gay abandon. Here's a fuller record of what she said as she threw to the clueless but supportive Johnny Joey Jones:

PERINO: Every time a Democrat goes on TV, they add two to three million more to how many people are going to lose their health care. It's 7.8 million people that would be required to do these work requirements, and it's illegal immigrants. It's 7.8.

Yesterday, it was up to 20 million, even though that's not true. It's like a game of telephone down there.

Jones quickly began describing the rampant Social Security fraud among the people in Dalton, Georgia—among the people he loves. As he continued, he seemed to think that the talkers were discussing changes to the Medicare program.

In that belief he was mistaken—but as the old saying goes, it was close enough for "cable news" work! As for Perino, she seemed to be reading from her talking-point sheets as she mocked the way the Democrats kept pushing the numbers up—and as she said the latest number simply isn't true.

By now, it wasn't clear what that latest number even referred to. But this slightly jumbled report in USA Today had at least explained where that new number had come from:

Senate vote: 20 million people could lose Medicaid benefits

[...]

Nationwide, between 12 million and 20 million people could lose Medicaid coverage under deep cuts to the health insurance program proposed by Senate Republicans, according to two estimates.

The first, by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, calculates that the Senate version of the reconciliation bill would leave 11.8 million people uninsured by 2034. The second, by the Senate Joint Economic Committee Minority, estimates that about 20 million people could lose the coverage under the amended Senate bill.

[...]

The Senate included an amendment that would not only slash Medicaid writ large—as House Republicans wanted—but would also reduce the federal share of Medicaid spending for people enrolled through state-level expansions of the Affordable Care Act. The expansions made more people eligible for subsidized insurance.

It sounded like the number may have jumped to 20 million because of the changes in the Senate bill. Perino contented herself with telling Fox viewers that the laughable new number simply wasn't true.

So it went—so it has gone—as people in Red and Blue America increasingly live in two different worlds. About this and about almost everything else, Blue Americans hear one thing. Red Americans hear something quite different.

Meanwhile, how is an American citizen supposed to know what's actually (most likely) true? Alas! In large part due to the complexification of everything, it can be extremely hard to complete a satisfactory search for the truth.

Tomorrow, we'll return to what Compagno said at the end of last week's pseudo-discussion. After that, we'll take you through the search we ourselves conducted about California's "illegals."

Every stumblebum a king! Simply put, it's the way our clownlike American discourse is constructed now!

Tomorrow: What is truth?

WEDNESDAY: The president keeps pouring it on!

WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 2025

Delusional, dangerous conduct: Yesterday, we returned late in the day from our all-day medical outing. We hadn't had the chance to review President Trump's entire press event when we offered this report.

Yesterday's cabinet meeting / press event was truly one for the ages. Eventually, we came upon an additional report in Mediaite about one of the many peculiar things President Trump had said.

Headline included, Ahmed Austin Jr.'s report starts as shown below. In our view, Austin is reporting some delusional, highly dangerous behavior on the part of President Trump:

‘I Like to Watch the Enemy’: Trump Drops Wild Attack On CNN Reporter During Cabinet Meeting

President Donald Trump on Tuesday used his cabinet meeting to launch into another attack on CNN for its reporting on the strikes in Iran.

Following the U.S. military’s strikes on key Iranian nuclear facilities in June, CNN reported that early intelligence indicated that the damage was not total. Sources also told CNN that the strikes only set back Iran’s nuclear program by months. The goal of the mission was to wipe out the program entirely.

Since then, there have been conflicting reports on the severity of the attacks. The Trump administration has insisted that Iran’s nuclear program was destroyed, but after a briefing with top Trump cabinet officials, multiple members of Congress walked away with the belief that the damage was indeed minimal.

As all of this went on, Trump continued going after CNN—threatening to sue both CNN and the New York Times. He primarily took aim at [NAME WITHHELD], one of the reporters behind the initial story.

Yesterday, the president continued to assail that CNN reporter. In the wake of the Minnesota murders, it's amazing to see a sitting president continue to behave in such a reckless and dangerous way.

(For Rev's full transcript of the cabinet meeting / press event, you can just click here. Thank God for the invaluable Rev!)

In the passage from the Mediaite report, we've omitted the reporter's name. Here's some of what the sitting president said during yesterday's event. In the interest of cogency, we're omitting one misleading statement:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (7/8/25): [The attack on Iran] was a perfect military performance...I mean, those machines flew for 37 straight hours. They didn't stop. They went skedaddle. 

You know the word skedaddle? That means skedaddle. They dropped the bombs and somebody said, "Skedaddle, let's get the hell out of here." And every bomb hit its mark and hit it incredibly....

We had a lot of fake reporting. mostly from CNN, where the scammer writer, a writer for CNN—who should be fired, by the way. She was involved with the 51 fake intelligence agents, if you remember that. She did that story, created a story out of it. She created a story out of the “laptop from hell,” saying it came from Russia, but it actually came from Hunter Biden’s bedroom or worse.

Just a scammer and she’s still at CNN, which is pretty amazing—but we’ll ask you a question about her. But they came up with this concept that maybe the attack wasn’t that good. And I saw it happen right after the attack. I saw this person on CNN. I actually watch. I like to watch the enemy. You learn from the enemy. And I watch because you have to know where they’re coming from. 

The president went on from there. We're going to stop with his incredible statement that the CNN reporter is, and we quote, "the enemy."

Minnesota was only a few weeks ago, Already, we're back to that.

For the record, there was nothing wrong with the CNN journalist's report about the DIA's initial assessment of the bombing strike on Iran. Also, there was nothing wrong with her report for Politicoway back in October 2020, about the 51 intelligence agents who had signed a letter stating their tentative view about the Hunter Biden laptop.

In each instance, the CNN journalist was simply reporting an actual set of actual facts which had actually happened in the real world. The president continues to rant about these reports in a delusional, dangerous manner.

Is President Trump "lying" when he insists on angrily repeating his various bollixed tales? We know of no way to be certain.

As an alternative, is it possible that he actually is "delusional" in some diagnosable way? We don't know how to evaluate that possibility, but when delusional people believe crazy things, in theory they aren't "lying." Tragically, such people are stating a delusional, crazy belief. 

Last night, Lawrence O'Donnell continued to assail the president as "the stupidest president in American history," largely with reference to the president's endless misstatements about the way tariffs work.

It's always possible that O'Donnell's assertion is accurate. On the other hand, O'Donnell also refers to the president's statements as "lies."

Alas! The L-bomb implies that the president knows his statements are false. The S-bomb may seem to imply that he's so dumb that he may think his statements are actually true. 

Is something wrong with President Trump? In our view, O'Donnell's anger tends to keep him from making well-reasoned assessments.

For ourselves, we can't help wondering what a (carefully selected) medical specialist might say about this president's endless supply of ridiculous, repetitive statements—statements which are tied to his endless sense of persecution and to his endless supply of self-pity.

That said, the president's savaging of the CNN reporter is a deeply dangerous act. Yesterday, he actually called her "the enemy"—astoundingly, even that!

Minnesota was only a few weeks ago. That quickly, we're now back to that.

This is deeply disordered behavior. In our view, O'Donnell's simmering anger has him over his skis, and no one else seems to want to discuss the president's astonishing conduct.

AMERICAN DISCOURSE: When the last of the co-hosts finally spoke...

WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 2025

...she focused on Cali's "illegals:" Discourse, don't fail us now!

In the face of such pleas, the Fox News Channel had ordered up a special edition of its "cable news" program, The Five.

The Five is the most-watched show in "cable news." For better or worse, its viewership dwarfs that of any show on MSNBC or on CNN.

On it best days, The Five acquires its frisson from the way its panel is constructed, with four (4) MAGA adherents arrayed against one (1) nominal Democrat. On most days, the Democratic slot is filled by Harold Ford, a former congressman, or by Jessica Tarlov, a substantially feistier "American political strategist."

Especially since last November, Ford has sometimes seemed to be more pro-Trump than his four supposed MAGA-friendly antagonists. The frisson arrives when Tarlov starts injecting a relevant point into some pseudo-discussion, triggering an array of interruptions from her four pro-Trump co-hosts.

In these latter days of what was once the American discourse, four against one is where the Fox News Channel's original dream of "fair and balanced" seems to have drifted. But as we noted in Monday's report, last Wednesday was a special day, with no Democrat present:

The Five: Wednesday, July 2, 2025
Emily Compagno: co-host, Outnumbered
Lawrence Jones: co-host, Fox & Friends
Johnny Joey Jones: Fox News contributor
Dana Perino: regular co-host, The Five
Greg Gutfeld: regular co-host, The Five

That's the way The Mudville Five ran out on the field that day. 

On loan from God and from Fox & Friends, reliable blowhard Lawrence Jones was stationed in the "liberal" chair on this unusual day. When the gang began pretending to discuss the pending GOP megabill, their discussion of Medicaid coverage started off like this:

GUTFELD (7/2/25): [The Democrats] are the human version of hysterical tweets...They say, "Oh my God, you're cutting Medicaid! You're throwing, you're throwing the poor and needy"—

No, no, no! These are young, able-bodied people, and illegals. You know, this isn't a free buffet for people who could afford to pay for it. So enough with that.

[...]

PERINO: So on the health car front, Joey—every time a Democrat goes on TV, they add two to three million more to how many people are going to lose their health care. It's 7.8 million people that would be required to do these work requirements, and it's illegal immigrants. 

Perino had started the pseudo-discussion with mocking remarks about the way the bill was being critiqued by Dems. It then came time for Gutfeld to swear that no one would lose their Medicaid coverage except for able-bodied fraudsters—and illegal immigrants.

In the type of embarrassment not unknown to this program, Johnny Joey Jones seemed to think that the group was discussing coverage under the Medicare program. That said, he too seemed to agree: 

No one was going to lose his coverage under whatever program was being discussed unless the person in question was unable to prove that he or she deserved it.

Tarlov wasn't there to djspute this claim, triggering a bout of interruption and overtalking. Eventually, it came time for Emily Compagno to speak.

Compagno is the speed-talking co-host of the mid-day Outnumbered program. On The Five, Fox may be auditioning Compagno for the newly abandoned Judge Jeanine Pirro chair. 

No one will ever fill Judge Jeanine's shoes, but Compagno now started to speak. After more happy talk from Perino, Compagno started like this:

PERINO: Once you havet this bill, and people have the confidence that their taxes aren't going to go up. maybe that fuels some economic growth.

COMPAGNO: And this goes to show that— Why can't Democrats celebrate a win? Why can't they join together to celebrate and propel a vehicle that really would lift all boats?

According to the puzzled Compagno, the megabill was a vehicle which would lift all boats! Except for what you  see below, she seemed to have no idea why Dems might oppose such a bill:

COMPAGNO (continuing directly): And I hope that for all of them stunting for their re-election purposes, and clearly just to their echo chamber constituents, that they would remember what would happen if this didn't pass.

Why were Democrats opposing the bill? According to Compagno, they were just "stunting" their constituents off in the echo chamber.

She seemed to know of no other possible reason. On the merits, Compagno said the megabill was going to be a win for everyone!

So it goes on this program's pseudo-discussions each day at 5 p.m. Eventually, Compagno turned to the question of health care coverage, presumably under Medicaid.

She discussed her native California. We were struck by what she said:

COMPAGNO: Hearing Democrats on their TikTok and saying these sort of slogans, you know—Sandy Ocasio saying it's a betrayal of working families...or worthless Governor Gavin talking about the Americans that will lose health care—why don't you back up to the two million illegal immigrants on health care in your state, which everyone pays for, which is why they're fleeing?

[...]

I wish that there was thought behind it. I wish that they were actually human for a second, because they go— They show that anything that Trump eclipses any type of analysis that would actually help their constituents.

For the record, "Sandy" is the name they drop on Rep. Ocasio-Cortez as a means of diminishment. Then too, she spoke about "Governor Gavin."

In the larger sense, Compagno wished that Democrats were willing to be human. The bill would actually help their constituents, but they were refusing to get on board because the bill, which would lift all boats, had come from President Trump.

Compagno seemed to know of no possible serious reason for opposition to this bill. Upon what meat doth Red America feed? Whatever you think of the megabill, day after day after day after day, Red America feeds upon this type of messaging gruel!

That said, we were struck by what Compagno said about her native California. The panel had seemed to be discussing the bill's possible effect upon Medicaid coverage. Is it true, we wondered, that two million illegal immigrants are currently receiving Medicaid coverage in the Golden State?

Indeed, is it legal for any illegal / undocumented / unauthorized immigrant to receive Medicaid coverage? We'd tried to google that topic before, and we'd found it wasn't easy.

Fellow citizens, how about it? Can an "illegal immigrant" receive Medicaid coverage? Can several million such people be found in California alone?

As of last Wednesday, we still didn't know the answer to those questions. Tomorrow, as the discourse continues to die all around us, we'll show you what happened when we tried to find out.

"Illegals" will lose their Medicaid coverage, Gutfeld seemed to say. Everyone else seemed to agree—and Compagno delivered the final blow.

We've shown you what the savants said. Ladies and gentlemen, riddle us this:

Do you—indeed, does anyone else—know what's actually true?

Tomorrow: The complexification rules


TUESDAY: Something is wrong with a famous man...

TUESDAY, JULY 8, 2025

...and with one entire group: Returning from the medical shop, we learn that President trump has now said this about CNN and the New York Times and the air strikes on Iran:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (7/8/25): That mission was a work of art.

[...]

[The pilots] landed, and they were cheered. But the sad thing was, they were cheered and one of the pilots said:

“You know, we were a little concerned, because when we got out, we were told that, on television, they were reporting that we may have missed our targets. Sir, we hit every target. That’s what I do for a living. We hit every target.

“In fact, when I saw—when we dropped, when the bombs hit—a yellow haze came over the horizon that I’ve never seen before. It just lit up the whole horizon, brighter than the sun. It was like looking into the sun.” 

He goes, “We hit our target, because you know what that was that was exploding.”.

And—but they were a little downbeat because they listened to that fake CNN reporting, and the fake New York Times—they worked together to try and say that it wasn’t perfect.

They couldn’t say they missed. All they could say is, "Maybe it wasn’t perfect."

And you ought to fire that reporter immediately. You should fire her. A real fake. 

And so I just want to congratulate those pilots. And a lot of people don’t like bringing things like that up. I always like confronting, because otherwise the public doesn’t know that you’re a bunch of crooked people.

To review the videotape, see the Mediaite report. Concerning the statement, we'll say two things:

First, something is wrong with that person. We regard that as a human tragedy—as a tragic loss of human potential.

We regard that as a human tragedy. But also, something is wrong with an elite mainstream press corps which has agreed to disappear that fact and to avoid that topic.

For better or worse, the entire press corps has taken a dive—except, perhaps, for George Conway. Everyone we Blues are told to admire has agreed to take this dive.